Best External HDDs What You Can Buy For Your Mac, MacBook, & Backup

Report Data Collected On: 1/Jan/2019

Buying external hard drives for your computer system has become a lot easier in the recent times. Owing to the immense amount of technical modifications and innovations made in them, it is considered to be a better option to store all of your important information on some external hard drive.

The hard drives nowadays come with advanced safety and backup features to ensure the overall security of your data. With the high-tech external hard drives for your Mac and MacBook Pro, you can be convinced that your personal information is safe and secure from any kind of damage or potential loss.

Modern Mac systems usually do not allow you to upgrade the internal storage once you have purchased the same. Therefore, you can consider opting for external hard drives for the system. While buying any external hard drive for your Mac or MacBook Pro, there are certain considerations that you need to keep in mind. Here are some:

Capacity: It is important to pick the external hard drive as per your capacity requirements. There are several options for capacity when you are buying an external hard drive. From 500 GB of external hard drive to even 1 TB and 8 TB of hard drives –you can get it all as per your capacity requirements out of a hard drive.

Speed: While buying a relevant hard drive for your system, you must also check for the speed option offered by the given hard drive. The transfer speed should be good enough to satisfy your purpose.

If you are willing to purchase the best external hard drive for your Mac or MacBook Pro system, then here are our top suggestions:

So, Let’s See How Many Best Budget External Hard Drives Are Available In The Market;

Top 5th – WD Elements Portable

RPM– 5,400 RPM

Interface – USB 2.0, USB 3.0

Warranty – 1 Years

Price Tag – Around 100$ (4TB)

Cost Per GB – 100/4096 GB = Around 2¢/GB

Short Review: If you are looking to expand the available storage of your Mac PC or if you need an efficient backup of all the important information in one secure place, then the 4 TB external hard drive by Western Digital Elements is a perfect solution for you.

The Elements by Western Digital is a highly handy option and comes at a budget-friendly range to offer enhanced data storage capacity as well as top-notch data security.

The Elements hard drive by Western Digital is small enough to fit your pockets. Thus, it is highly portable as well and you can carry all your important data with you wherever you travel.

Through the USB 3.0 port, the Western Digital comes registered with real-world sustained copying speed of over 95 Mbps while writing and above 100 MBps when it comes to reading.

This is a faster and user-friendly option for a portable external hard drive in comparison to its rivals. When compared with other external hard drives in the market, WD Elements serves to be the cheapest, yet a high-performing option.

After going through a few iterations in the recent times, WD has introduced some high-tech features in this hard drive model for the ease of the users.

Top 4th – Seagate Backup Plus Hub for Mac

Short Review: The Seagate Backup Plus Hub features two additional USB 3.0 ports on its front side. This provides you an extra port when you need to connect the same.

The backup Plus Hub by Seagate is compact to serve as a reliable external drive for desktops. The dimensions of the hard drive are 4.6 inches X 1.6 inches X 7.8 inches with an overall weight of 1.1 kg.

These features make the hard drive extremely lightweight to be carried to any place that you like. Moreover, it can also be easily fitted to your travel bag. The drive by Seagate has been formatted in NTFS and includes a special feature known as Paragon Driver for Mac. This feature allows the hard drive to work with a Mac System or a MacBook Pro without any reformatting.

The drive comes with special Seagate Dashboard backup software. The software consists of three backup functions including PC Backup, Social Backup, and Mobile Backup.

The software interface offered by the drive is highly user-friendly and is very simple to understand. The Backup Plus external hard drive for Mac and MacBook Pro by Seagate comes with a 2-year plan of around 200 GB online storage provided by the Microsoft OneDrive.

As far as speed of the hard drive is concerned, the Backup Plus Hub by Seagate when connected with a USB 3.0 port, offers a writing speed of 181 MB per sec and a reading speed of 195 MBps.

Top3rd– WD My Passport for Mac

Short Review: Like most of the recent external hard drives, the My Passport model by Western Digital also comes with a USB 3.0 support.

This implies that the drive is good enough to transfer huge data to another device like your Mac system or MacBook Pro with much ease. My Passport is arguably the best model in the series of external hard drives by Western Digital.

The drive is rugged, fast, and versatile as it features a strong level of encryption to ensure the safety of your data. The My Passport external hard drive by Western Digital comes in a variety of hues including brighter shades of orange, blue, red, yellow, and white.

The driver also includes a 256-bit AES hardware encryption which is supposed to be the strongest commercial form of encryption that is available until now.

Western Digital also offers the high-end backup software which is in the form of a drive utility that ensures the checking of the status as well as erasing the drive in a secure manner. In addition to this, the My Passport external hard drive is a lot slimmer and lighter than most of its rivals in the field.

Top 2nd – Silicon Power Rugged Armor A60

Short Review: The hard drive by Silicon Power resembles a typical highly portable device. The device has dimensions around 3.7 inches by 7 inches.

Owing to this dimension, the hard drive is completely compact. In addition to this, the hard drive is also very lightweight by weighing just around half a pound. The device comes with a 4-inch USB 3.0 cable.

There is also a 2nd 3-foot USB 3.0 cable to ensure a longer connection to the desktop or another system. On the other side, the drive also comes with a single A female USB 3.0 port for both power as well as data. The port is made available with a tight rubber lid to ensure that the overall device is completely waterproof.

The casing of the hard drive by Silicon Power is completely secure with plastic, aluminum, and rubber to make it completely proof from water. This makes the hard drive withstand water pressure even for 30 minutes under water.

When it comes to the overall performance, the drive comes with a writing speed of 87 MB per second along with a reading speed of 102.7 MB per second. These speeds are good enough to transfer a great amount of data with much ease.

Top 1st – LaCie Rugged STEV2000400

RPM– 7,200 RPM

Interface – USB 2.0, USB 3.0

Warranty – 3 Years

Price Tag – Around 180$ (2TB)

Cost Per GB – 180/2048 GB = Around 8¢/GB

Short Review: If you are looking for some solid strong hard drive that secures all of your confidential data, then the LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt is the perfect one for you. The 2 TB RAID model of the external hard drive comes with bright orange bumpers.

In addition to this, the external body of the drive also features port covers for ensuring extra protection from water, dirt, and any other external harm. When you need to carry a bundle of files along with you wherever you go, it is an excellent option.

The hard drive by LaCie comes with a silver, matte-aluminum body with a permanently-attached Thunderbolt cable for ensuring additional drop protection. There is also included a special detachable USB 3.0 cable.

The hard drive performs well by offering a throughput of 382 MB per second reading speed along with a writing speed of 342 MB per second with the help of the USB 3.0. The drive comes with an overall 2 TB capacity.

There are additional features like an automatic backup of your data, enhanced password protection with the specialized LaCie Private-Public Software and warranty upgrades to give the users an overall enhanced experience.

Buy from the best collection of external hard drives for Mac and MacBook Pro. Look through your required specifications when you need to buy a reliable and well-performing external hard drive for yourself. Have a great time!

And that’s our list of the top Mac supported External HDDs. Stay tuned for more! – So, what will you pick, if you wanted one for yourself? Let me know in the comments down below:

Happy Shopping!!!

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My name is Madhur Taneja and I’m a Computer Hardware Engineer and I proudly love to teach about computer software & hardware repairing stuffs. My hobby is blogging about computer problems solutions and I'm also doing some social work by helping my website's guest users to fix their problem by deskdecode's technical support page.